Wee when coughing

[Echo21]

Hi all I am close to my due date and have had this symptom for weeks. Every time I cough I wee a bit and I am getting a bad cough now. I have to change underwear loads and wearing pads.

Midwife doesn't seem too concerned at all but said to follow up after birth for pelvic exercises. The thing is I haven't done any exercises pre pregnancy and now I'm worried, as I wasn't told to. how long after pregnancy does one typically wait to see if it has gone back to normal vs getting help?

It happens to pretty much all mums. It also sometimes happens to non mums as they get older. You will need pelvic exercises after birth, get the NHS Squeezy app and do the exercises 3x a day. They recommend you keep doing them on a regular basis for the rest of your life.

It will be the extra weight putting pressure that’s causing this. The nhs have an app called squeezey (sadly need to pay for it) which helps with pelvic floor exercises after birth.

It can take up to 2 years for a women’s body to return to a normalish state after having a baby. I would do the pelvic floor exercises quite a few times throughout the day. Hopefully within a few months you’ll notice a difference, I found I noticed a big difference within 6 weeks when my body lost the water retention and my hormones settled.

(something no one tells you about after giving birth), yeah you will become incontinent for a while. It will slowly improve over the months